Breast Clinic - Tuesday 6th July

Croissants! Yep, you guessed it, Dad D found the bakery! He's just as impressed as Mum is, especially as he was faced with trays of freshly baked doughnuts oozing with jam.  He stayed firm though and stuck to croissants and a nut loaf (not sure he'll be so disciplined later on in the week!).

Had a few deliveries throughout the morning.  A gorgeous flower card from R & S, then 2 large boxes arrived at the same time.  1 was a bouquet from Marks and Spencer (including freesias which I love), with love and best wishes from friends in Bridgwater.  The other 1 was a bouquet from Next from T, one of my course buddies.  All beautiful, thank you so much.

Not long after Chris came home at lunchtime, I had a visitor.  My dear friend A, on a visit from Taunton.  I haven't seen her in ages and was thrilled. Her gift also included freesias.  This was bound to be a good omen for my afternoon visit to RUH!  After A left, we went for lunch at a local garden centre, before Chris and I continued onto RUH and Dad D went to pick the boys up from school.

We decided to drive and managed to park quite quickly at the hospital.  The breast unit was packed - we got the last 2 free chairs.  A notice on the board informed us that 1 of the consultants had a 3 hour wait!  Oh joy.  We managed to get a paper and magazine to while away the time only to find that it was so hot we were falling asleep!  I was so tired (my body telling me to sleep again and it'll all go away).  We didn't have that long to wait in the end and were called through to a small room with a couch and 1 chair.  Another wait for Irene and Mr Maddox to join us.  It turned out they were running over 3 hours behind from the morning clinic!  Irene took her usual place on the couch near me and Chris stood up while Mr M explained the results of the analysis:

• 2 tumours in the breast measured 2.6cm and 1.5cm.
• They were grade 2 mucinous (slimy - not a common type) DCIS (Ductal Carcinoma in Situ).
• There was evidence of vascular invasion.
• 6 out of the 17 lymph nodes were affected, in fact the cancer had burst out of the nodes, apparently.
• The cancer is Oestrogen receptive. They measure this on a scale of 0 - 300 and mine was 300, so highly Oestrogen positive (this is a good thing by all accounts and will respond to hormone treatment).

All of this means that there is a high risk that there are cancer cells elsewhere, so they are going to chuck everything at me - chemo, radiotherapy and hormone treatment.  They will follow each other in that order. 
The chemo treats the whole body, so any cells anywhere will be killed off. 
The radiotherapy is localised, so will target the breast area and under the arm.  Unfortunately this means that my arm will swell (lymphoedema) and I will always have to wear a compression sleeve.  Oh deep bloody joy! 
Then hormone treatment which will stop the Oestrogen and therefore restrict the growth of the cancer cells (I think!). 
This will all be discussed with the Oncologist in about 3 weeks time.  They won't start anything until the wound has healed, which isn't looking too bad at all.  Irene took off the dressings and steristrips.  Looks quite neat really.  There was 1 small scab that fell off and continued to leak, so a small dressing was put back on there.  Then she drained off the fluid that had built up - quite a lot of it!  Chris was very brave and only needed to look away when she inserted the needle!!!!  This may happen a few times and I need to go back once a week to have it drained.  I'm to ring on Monday morning and sort out a time to go over.
So, in all, not a bad visit.  Just confirmation of what's going to happen, which they've suggested all along.

I'm now sat, full up after a Sainsbury's indian meal, next to Vaughan who's getting quite animated watching Uruguay v Holland (he's got Holland in our sweepstake!).
Think it may be an early night for me though - been a busy day.